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Parkinson's Disease Study Results Released

U.S. scientists say they have completed one of the first large-scale studies of the role of common genetic variation in Parkinson's disease.

While the study's results fill in some missing pieces of the genetic puzzle, researchers say they are primarily of benefit as a starting point for more detailed studies.

The research was led by the National Institute of Aging and National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. The data were derived from blood samples of 267 people with Parkinson's disease and 270 neurologically normal individuals.

The information generated by the study is available to the public in a database.

"This is, to my knowledge, the first publicly available genotype data of this magnitude outside of the International HapMap effort, and certainly the first disease-linked dataset," said Andrew Singleton, the NIA researcher who led the study. "I hope this will prove to be a valuable resource for future genetics work in Parkinson's disease, both for our laboratory and for other researchers around the world."

Results of the study appear in the early online edition of The Lancet Neurology.